TIFU by being a homophobe years ago

As the title states, I (33 M) f'd up by being a homophobic piece of shit when I was in senior high.  Basically there was this new kid who had just moved into town and was now attending my school, in a matter a days news of the kid who i'll call Karl, spread throughout the school of him being gay. 

Now, this school was super religious when it came to stuff like students committing crimes and kids being gay, so when thi though he tried to hide it, it was still pretty obvious.

So one day, my friends and I decided that we were gonna f around and bully the new kid. One of my friends thought it'd be a good idea to make a ketchup bomb, this essentially was a bottle of ketchup that had baking soda added to it and it was then shaken. Then came lunch time, with the bottle of ketchup and a little package of baking soda I sneaked behind Karl and mixed the two components,shook and closed the bottle, well this little prank went south really quickly as the ketchup bomb exploded everywhere and made a loud sound. I, ofcourse got 3 weeks of detention and the other guys who were involved got away scott free.

Time came for detention and as I walk into the little detention room, guess who's there, Karl of all people. He's just sitting by a window drawing but that was soon cut short as the vice principal who gave the detention led both me and Karl down to the schools basement, there, waiting on us was the school janitor. Without hesitation he handed us cleaning equipment and we were then told that we'd have to clean our schools dirty basement which contained mountains of boxes and old school supplies.

Karl and I were left alone and unsupervised for 3 hours to clean the basement. For the entirety of the first hour we workd in silence as we moved and sorted these items,during the second hour he tripped and fell while carrying one of the boxes and i went to help him up. But he swatted my hand away,brushed the cob webs off of himself and got back to work. But not long after, he turned to me and said " you did it because I'm gay? The ketchup bomb, you made it go off all over me just because you don't like that I'm gay." I stared at him not knowing what to say, I had never been confronted about my shenanigans up until this point so the only answer I could give him was "yea, I don't like you f*gs ." I then smirked an continued to look at him.

He slowly walked towards my, thoungh i was tall he still towered over me. He came extremely close to my face and whispered "I know you like boys too, uh-huh I see how you watch those guys in the locker room after they shower." I was confused and shocked, I never thought anyone had seen me looking at other boys and even if they did, it's not like they'd think anything of it because everyone thought I was straight and so did I.

He was still close to my face after he said this, so I grabbed his face and kissed him. I don't know why, I just felt someway about him in that moment. I then pushed him away and we both stared at each other with a blank expression, then I began to beat him, I was scared that he'd tell someone so I beat him, and pretty bad too. The vice principal heard the commotion and burst in only to see Karl on the ground and me hovering over him. He asked what happened and I replied " he tried to touch me".

My lie led to Karl being expelled and his family who were the nicest and most calm people packed up and left our little town never to be seen again. I remember seeing Karl in the back seat of their car with his head tilted down as they sped off into the unknown. For the months that followed, I could not stop thinking about the kiss,I began to question if my whole life was a lie and why I was so extremely homophobic.

Grocery store

Fast forward 15 years, here I am married to a man. Crazy right? Well yesterday my husband (33M) who i'll call Matt,and I went grocery shopping and while collecting items he goes off to find some beans. About 7 minutes had past and he hadn't returned so I made my way to the canned goods isle and there I see my husband with the beans in his hand talking to this tall, slender person with long hair who at first, I presumed to be a woman because of their feminine facial structure. So thinking this is one of his friends I slowly approached,extend my hand and smile ready to greet this person, then we locked eyes ...I.could.not.believe.it ... it was Karl. The look on his face went from pure joy to that of a person who had just come face to face with the grim reaper. Karl looked absolutely mortified at the sight of, without saying a word he rest his cart of items on the flood and walked so fast that he nearly sprinted out of the store. I stood there in shock unable to utter a word. " that was strange " said my husband. I didn't reply, I simply pushed the trolley towards the checkout area and then to the car all while maintaining a blank stare and being speechless. Once we got in the car that's where Matt rapid fired rounds of questions at me, he said things like " were you two a couple?" , " did he bully you as a child or something?" Well this question made me break down in tears and I explained " No, no you've got it wrong, I was the bully." I cried so hard that I began to gasp for air, Matt tried to call me down but the only thing that worked ways be pulling over and getting out of the car. When I had finally calmed down about 15 minutes later, I explained to Matt how I was the bully, how i beat Karl after I kissed him and lied on him which resulted in him moving out of the town. The same mortified expression adorned Matt's face, he was in disbelief at what I had just said because he had also been bullied terribly in high school. We got back in the car and continued our drive in silence, it's been a day and things still seem weird between matt and i.

TL;DR- I was homophobic in high-school and ended up beating a gay kid who my husband ran into later in life